Can It Be Legal for a Prospective Company to Deliver Your E-mail to Other Candid

Updated on August 07, 2013
N.N. asks from New Town, MA
13 answers

I posted a resume and cover letter to a business to get a place. Inside a week I obtained a general Thanks/No Thanks e-mail saying other candidates better meet their skills. Common, not a issue with that. However, the # 34; field of the e-mail & & # 34; To listed all the additional candidates that had used and did not qualify. I did not approve this business to discuss my e-mail address with anybody. Can it be legal for them to complete that?

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C.V.

answers from Columbia on

It was an accident, and no, it's not illegal.

Forward the email to HR and let them know that they should BCC all candidates from here on out.

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L.R.

answers from Washington DC on

It is not illegal but it was unprofessional and sloppy of that manager or HR person to do that. It is not clear to me whether you mean that the text of the e-mail listed the rejected candidates or whether you mean that the rejection e-mail's address list -- the people to whom it was sent -- openly showed that it was a group e-mail and listed everyone's address in the "to" line. Either way, you don't want to work for someone who is that sloppy.

I might be tempted to forward that e-mail back to the sender and copy it to the HR department, and say very politely that "You may not have been aware that all the rejected applicants' e-mail addresses were openly displayed in the 'to' line when you sent the message. I assume you meant to use the 'blind carbon copy' line. I just wanted to let you know so that you were aware that all applicants' contact information had been made public to the other applicants."

If you think you might apply to this company again, don't do that, but it would just tempt me to tell them professionally that they blew it by sending a group rejection e-mail. Of course everyone DOES that but it's not good form to have all the applicants listed in the "to" line. Just looks bad. Of course this employer just might not care at all.

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J.B.

answers from Houston on

Great first question.

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D.B.

answers from Boston on

What Leigh said is what I would say. Like Elle Belle, I'm not sure about the sentence with && in it or what #34 means.

Do you mean they sent this email to 34 people?? They should have sent the email with "undisclosed recipients" so that no emails were disclosed. They have opened up all those emails to spam now.

Not professional. Either someone doesn't know how email works, or they really just worked too fast.

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S.B.

answers from Houston on

Not illegal but unprofessional. I do NOT send rejection e-mails. I send out letters. I just think it is more personal especially since the candidate took time to come to our company to interview.

Just because something is unprofessional doesn't mean its illegal.

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D.D.

answers from New York on

Not illegal but certainly very unprofessional. Of course the HR department may have thought they bcc'ed and put the info in the wrong spot. Kind of like how people mean to reply to the sender and end up replying to all on a group email.

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B..

answers from Dallas on

Just unprofessional, not illegal.

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C.O.

answers from Washington DC on

ETA: I love Leigh's suggestion to forward the e-mail the company and ensure you copy the HR manager or even the President (if you know the name) so he/she can know what their company is doing....

N.:

Welcome to mamapedia!

I'm sorry - that sucks. I don't send mass e-mails to my candidates. I know there are companies that do. There are form letters that can be generated from an Excel spreadsheet or a Sharepoint database - there are characters that tell the auto-generating mass e-mail to fill these spaces with information from this space.

It's not illegal. It's unprofessional. It just shows this is NOT a company you want to work with, right?

So chalk it up to a learning experience and press on.

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M.L.

answers from Cleveland on

I agree with the first poster. that was perfect.

I had a friend Abby that just interviewed for a job and got a rejection email with Dear Betty we aren't interested, instead of dear abby. she did call them on it to clarify but very unprofessional on the company's part.

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J.E.

answers from Minneapolis on

Emails are legally restricted with solicitations, HR, legal, etc. This wasn't "illegal", but unethical.

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K.B.

answers from Minneapolis on

I'm sorry, I don't understand the sentence that starts with "However."

Otherwise, it would seem odd that they'd share your information at all, but I guess NOTHING is safe once it hits the web...

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J.S.

answers from Hartford on

I would actually assume that it wasn't intentional, but it's not illegal to do that. It's not like they're selling your e-mail address and personal information. It wasn't medical information covered under HIPAA. :-)

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J.C.

answers from New York on

It's probably a mistake or lack of common sense. They should have blind copied everyone.

I would not worry about it. But you should reply with a note to whomever sent it and remark about poor business ethics.

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